Mayincatec

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Under Hollywood History, all historical Mexican, Central, and South American nations are lumped into one exotic and often barbaric people: the Mayincatec, featuring aspects of the Maya (in modern Yucatan peninsula and Central America), Inca (in modern Peru) and Aztec (in Modern Central Mexico), plus many others (especially the Olmec, one of the oldest, as more continues to be discovered about them). It's a tossed salad of exciting bits from all their histories, with a topping of myth and fiction. And the dressing is blood.

Virgin Sacrifice: Ironically, the Aztecs, Mayans, and Inca primarily sacrificed men—female sacrifices aren't unheard of, but they tended to be special occasions or practiced by other tribes in the area. To be sure, it's not as prevalent in this setting as others featuring human sacrifice.

I'm a Humanitarian: The practice of trying to acquire mystical strength through the consumption of the blood, and specifically the heart, of one's enemies? Mesoamerica either originally invented it, or invented it separately from the rest of the world.

The Long Count Calendar, which has 394-year b'ak'tun cycles one of which ended on December 21, 2012. The historical Mayans did not predict any sort of apocalypse on this date, but it has nonetheless resulted in the Mayan Doomsday trope. Incidentally, the Mayan calendar is frequently erroneously portrayed with the Aztec calendar.

Sometimes, when the producers do the research, an extremely sophisticated grasp of astronomy.

If they use a specific god, it'll most likely be Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. Since they'll probably know nothing beyond his name, they'll likely show human sacrifice to him, although he was perhaps the only god in many pantheons who didn't ask for it.

In Real Life, the Maya, the Inca (of whom the Quechua people descended from), and the Aztecs were all distinct cultures separated by thousands of miles. To be fair, the Aztecs/Mexica (who speak Nahuatl) and the Maya are close together, both living in what is now Mexico (the word comes from the Mexica and Mexihtli). Their actual history is interesting and diverges from the trope quite a bit. However, keep in mind that the trope is frequently also valid in modern Latin America.

Examples:

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Advertising

Kahlua Liqueur ran a TV ad campaign featuring Mayinctecs.

Hagaan Dazs Ice cream ran a campaign attributing the conquest of the Mayans and incidentally, the bringing of chocolate to Europe to Cortez.note Chocolate trading didn't come until later, as chocolate was a horrendously bitter drink that was of no interest to the conquistadors.

In the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua while Papi talks about how his ancestors fought with Aztec warriors, it shows an aerial view of Machu Pichu, an Incan city.

Anime and Manga

The entirety of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure starts out with a cursed Stone Mask created by the Aztecs. Although we later discover it is the creation of an immortal advanced race of people known as the Pillar Men. It still doesn't explain why they dress Mayincatec. Or even weirder, using steel weapons in one of the flashbacks.

One Piece: Enel's "cover arc" featured an ancient civilization on the moon that used South American-Indian artwork. It's not clear if the moon-droids are good or evil — they're fighting against traditionally evil-looking mink/weasel-men in Spanish armor); regardless, they're now in the hands of Enel....

∀ Gundam had the heroes passing by a country that seems to be a blend of Mayan, Incan, and Hispanic influences.

The ancient Ord tribe whose semi-ruined temples (well, entirely ruined temples by the time the Big Bad has messed them up) are featured in Explorer Woman Ray seems to be pretty much along these lines. It's claimed they used to worship the Sun and their temples have hidden treasure which no-one was able to find; their true secret is much more interesting.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck has a literal example — a statue on the Isthmus of Panama with Aztec, Incan, and Mayan influences in its design, commemorating trade across the isthmus.

The classic Carl Barks' Donald Duck story Lost In the Andes has Donald and the nephews discover a lost, vaguely Inca-ish civilization where everything is cube-shaped or full of right angles, even the people and the wildlife. The natives are friendly, but consider it a terrible crime to produce anything round. Naturally, the nephews have brought bubble gum. Hilarity Ensues.

The Tick parodies this with The Deertown Aztecs — a former sports team that crashed in the jungle and now attempt to live their lives according to the only book they had: "Aztecs On My Mind." They have a temple pyramid complete with traps.

In one of their early adventures the Teen Titans encounter the half-animal demons of the pyramid temple at Xochatan ...in the Andes. (For clarification: "Xochatan" sounds awfully Mexican and not remotely Andean.)

Tintin: The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. The Incas are portrayed rather sympathetically, as even though they try to sacrifice the heroes, their interactions with outsiders have rarely been positive. Oh, and they suck at astronomy, as a plot point. On the whole Hergé, who got a lot of his information from National Geographic does not mix up the Inca with the Maya except with reference to the prophetic inscription mentioning the retribution that will befall the violators of Rascar Capac's tomb, which plays a large part in The Seven Crystal Balls. The Incas, unlike the Mayas and Aztecs, had no system of writing. The original version of The Seven Crystal Balls, serialized in Le Soir, also contained a lead disc with symbols "resembling Aztec or Inca signs", but Hergé excised the panel that showed it and texts that mentioned it when the album version was produced.

The Aztecs and the fall of Tenochtitlan figure big in the backstory of Hellboy: The Island. The Aztec priests had gold tablets inscribed with the true history of the Ogdru Jahad and the creation of the world.

Superboy Annual #3 (part of the Legends of the Dead Earth event) features a colony world called Aztlan whose settlers adopted a Mayincatec culture. One of the early colonists was a metahuman who inspired the others by fusing the myth of Quetzacoatl with the legend of Superman, beginning a line of Supermen and Superboys who believed they were granted their powers by the god.

The Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis comic adaptation opens with Indy being offered as a sacrifice to (and turned down by) "the Aztec god of war, Tenochtitlan" (although it turns out to be All Just a Dream). Tenochtitlan was actually the capital city of the most warlike group of the Aztec Empire, the Mexica; its site is the oldest part of Mexico City. The Mexica's patron deity and the god of war, was Huitzilopochtli.

Films — Animated

The Emperor's New Groove is pretty definitively set in the Incan Empire, although the word "Inca" is never said, and Kuzco's theme song guy refers to them as "Mesoamerican", which the Incans really weren't. Still, the mountain-and-jungle setting, the farming of llamas and alpacas, and the overall art style are all specifically Incan, as is Kuzco's name; Cusco (or Cuzco) was the Incan capital (and is still a provincial capital in Peru today). The animated series The Emperor's New School has decided to be a bit more specific and explicitly confirm that they are Incan, usually by way of jokes such as "Incan Idol", though extensive use of Gratuitous Spanish is present.

The Road to El Dorado features a sort of generic South American native culture that has a lot of aspects of this trope albeit VERY Mayan flavored. Including the sacrifices—though that's mostly the bad guy trying to do those, presumably to fuel his Blood Magic.

The Maya-style temple in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. the film has aliens living with the ancient Maya and teaching them about agriculture, never mind that the characters are in Peru, closer to the Inca than the Maya, and even so using Inca may have been inaccurate geographically speaking. The civilization is supposed to be an Expy of El Dorado located in Brazil, with references to the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures. The temple also included artifacts from civilizations all over the world.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl features cursed Aztec gold with Aztec-style skull carvings. The figure carved on the treasure chest itself is the "Gateway God" from the Gateway of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, hundreds of years and half a continent distant from the Aztecs.

The treasure's backstory being an Aztec ramson paid to Cortes and then Cortes going back on his word and being cursed for it is actually much closer to the story of Pizarro, Atahualpa and the Room of Gold than anything that happened during the Conquest of Mexico. In fact, the Aztecs didn't even use gold as currency. Cortes had a long, mostly prosperous life after conquering the Aztecs (other than being barred from returning to Mexico) while Pizarro's pals were marred by infighting and assassinations, including Pizarro's own.

Mel Gibson's controversial Apocalypto portrays the urban Maya as the The Evil Empire and a small Mayan village in the jungle as pure, innocent victims. There are obvious close parallels to Braveheart. He seemed to want to portray the Maya situation when part of the civilization collapsed and the cities had fallen into ruin and decadence, but he basically took every Aztec stereotype and gave them to the Maya. While they did practice human sacrifice and the period at the end of the classical era of the Maya was marked by increased warfare, neither are portrayed properly. It also has the priests offering the sacrifices to Kukulkan (Quetzalcoatl for the Aztecs), the one god in the Mesoamerican pantheon that abhorredHuman Sacrifice.

The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky, averts the trope by sticking steadfastly (and accurately) to Mayan imagery and symbolism. Xibalba, the Mayan underworld is represented as a golden nebula. The historically-based section note a fictional novel-within-novel written by one of the characters features Conquistadors, Mayan warriors and priests, and a step-pyramid temple based on the actual archaeological site of Uxmal wherein lies the Tree of Life. Within the work the Mayas are a collapsed civilization (which they were when the Conquistadors arrived.) The hidden pyramid is their last, secret hiding place, clearly already decrepit and neglected, with only a few dozen devoted guardians.

In Puma Man the villain wears a golden Aztec mask containing alien mind control circuitry. He is fought by Puma Man, a "man-god", sired by ancient alien Aztec pumas and equipped with a magical Aztec golden belt. Most of the real fighting is done by his mentor Vadinho, an Aztec priest to the space gods... who lives in a temple in the Andes. Inca territory. Gah!

Kings Of The Sun, a film about a deposed Mayan king escaping to the future United States and meeting another native American tribe led by Yul Brynner.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator takes place mostly within a typically Mayincatec pyramid... buried in Antarctica (thanks to Ancient Astronauts). The experts who examined the temple seemed to think that it had features common to ancient cultures across the globe, (specifically Cambodian and Egyptian) but the main vibe was definitely Mesoamerican.

Through From Dusk Till Dawn, the Whoopie Pie Twister goes from Mayincatec-inspired nightclub to vampire den to a full-blown Mayincatec sacrificial pyramid almost buried in the Mexican desert. All within a short distance of the Mexican-American border.

Captive Universe: a Generation Ship is launched to the stars. The population of the ship is given a copy of the Aztec's culture which is depicted as brutal but ideal, from the designers point of view: it is very stable and crushes all curiosity and restlessness.

Cautiously averted in El Conquistador. Here, the Aztec civilization is depicted in the most respectful and distinctive way possible, as Federico Andahazi is a careful researcher prior to his novels.

Where's Waldo Now? has Waldo in the middle of a giant Aztec vs Conquistador battle. The Aztecs seemed to be winning. This may seem surprising, but during the Noche Triste (Sorrowful night), the 30th of June 1520, the population of Tenochtitlan (Mexico) rioted against the invaders and drove them out with heavy losses. Cortes came back with a vengeance...

Parodied as the Tezuman Empire in Discworld novel Eric by Terry Pratchett. Their god Quezovercoatl is a feathered boa, which is almost the same as a winged snake. And is actually a low-level demon about six inches high.

MAR Barker wrote five novels based in the world of Tekumel, a world he created from aspects of virtually all Pre-Columbian Meso-American cultures. He created Tekumel for the same reason that Tolkien built Middle Earth: so that he could have a world to use as a linguistic playground. In Barker's case the languages he created were based on Indo-Asian and Meso-American languages, and the cultural mix is the result of deliberate choice, not lack of research.

The Mask of the Sun by Fred Saberhagen features Aztecs and Incas from alternate futures where each survived and prospered trying to tamper with history as we know it to create their (mutually incompatible) histories. And the titular mask is a device from one of those futures that gives its wearer precognitive hints.

Everworld features the Aztecs still existing (along with many other ancient civilizations) in an alternate universe, ruled over by the Physical God Huitzilpoctli. As a result their whole civilization seems to revolve around getting him human hearts to eat, to the point that the people themselves are forced into eating the rest to survive.

Presumably on account of very little being known about them, when the Olmecs appear in S.M.Stirling’s Island in the Sea of Time books, their culture appears to be just a compilation of different Mesoamerican stereotypes like viewing strangers as gods and practicing human sacrifice.

In Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus', where the author has somewhat Shown His Work in researching the Native American cultures, specifically Mesoamerican and Caribbean ones. He then postulates what would happen if Columbus never sailed West (the Tlaxcalans, even more bloodthirsty but much more progressive than the Aztecs, would rise to power, conquer their continent and then cross into Europe to Take Over the World). Except that the Tlaxcalans were nowhere near as bloodthirsty, war-loving or expansionist as the Mexica, the main ethnic group of the Aztec Empire.

In his Earth (The Book), Jon Stewart implies the collapse of the Mayan civilization due to Cortés. Except Cortés didn't have anything to do with the conquest of Yucatan. He focused his efforts on conquering the Aztec lands. It would be other Spaniards who would attack the Maya later. In fact, the Maya wouldn't fall until over 150 years later, and their civilization was already in decline even before the conquistadors got there. They're still around, by the way.

Revealing Eden features descendants of the Aztec Empire living alongside an Ecuadorian tribe, when in reality the Aztecs never expanded past Central America. One scene also features the stone terraces built by the Inca — but somehow the Aztecs get the credit for building them.

Live-Action TV

The Exxilons in the Doctor Who serial Death To The Daleks have elements of this as well; they're the Ancient Astronauts who visited the Incas, and their Great City looks a lot like a step pyramid. In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Left Handed Hummingbird they also accidentally left some technology where the Aztecs could find it.

Averted in The Aztecs, where some research was done to make it historically accurate.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "Legacy of Terror". An Aztec cult is trying to resurrect the mummy of their god Nanauatzin. They sacrifice perfect people by cutting out their hearts. Features scary bird masks, feathered headdresses and a sacrifice scene at the top of a flight of steps at the local sports stadium in lieu of a step pyramid.

Averted by Horrible Histories: the Mayans have not been featured at all, but the Aztecs and Incas are accurately treated as two distinct cultures.

Played straight with the hairstyles, of all things. Incan women are shown wearing Horned Hairdos, when it was the Aztec women who wore their hair like that.

Also played straight in the sets: The Inca set from one series was used as an Aztec one in the next.

During his time aboard the ISS, Larry in NUMB3RS makes himself a quipu, a recording device used by Andean South American cultures (e.g. the Inca) consisting of threads of llama or alpaca hair encoded by knots in a base ten system. It was primarily used to record numerical data for tribute payments. Unfortunately, Larry, who appears to know much about them, claims they were used by Aztecs (from North America). Furthermore, he claims to have encoded his memories on them, even though right now it's only being speculated that the quipu were used for more than numerical data and no other meaning has been decyphered.

The X-Files episode "Teso dos Bichos" deals with a mummy called "amaru" that is found in the titular archaeological site (which is in Canada pretending to be Ecuador, despite the name being Portuguese for "Burial Mound of Critters") and then taken to a museum in Boston where the local archaeologists begin to be killed by a cat spirit.

Music

Neil Young's Cortez The Killer is all sorts of confused. It mentions Cortez, Montezuma and human sacrifice - so Aztecs, right? But the very next verse (yep, right after the stuff about human sacrifice) we have "Hate was just a legend/ And war was never known". So maybe not the Aztecs. The Inca certainly "lifted many stones"... but they never met Cortez. The Incas, being the biggest empire with the biggest and best equipped army in the Americas before the Europeans showed up, don't seem to have "never known" about war, either.

Animusic: The large temple at the end of the video for "Heavy Light" resembles Aztec design. (The drum + laser arch drops circles of light which play the drums.)

In the plane of Alara, which has been splintered into different shards each lacking two of the colors of mana. Naya has Red, Green and White mana but no Blue or Black, resulting in a sunlit jungle world with no need for progress and ambition. Its inhabitants are content to worship giant beasts as gods, down to occasional Human Sacrifice, and are fairly hedonistic. They are deliberately modeled after the Aztec and these aspects of their culture, but as the world as a whole loss their drive for more complex civilizations and has in fact lost their former empires they also resemble the Maya in this regard.

Ixalan is a more complete world, and has two factions that more properly resemble their real world counterparts: the Sun Empire, modeled after the Aztec with a few Incan trappings, and the River Heralds, a group of merfolk that is the local analogue of the Maya.

Shadowrun: Aztlan. Something of an invoked trope in that it's explicitly noted in-universe that the Aztlan powers-that-be have deliberately thrown random motifs from old Latin-American cultures together to create a national identity to suit their own ends. One of the narrators of the Aztechnology sourcebook sarcastically notes that most of the Aztlan leadership are descended from European ancestors and have little to no grounding in the "ancient culture" they've "revived" at all.

In Nomine — based on the conflicts of gods and devils — features Quetzalcoatl, Mictalantechtli, Huitzilopochtli and other Aztec gods.

Wraith: The Oblivion is unusual in having sympathetic Aztec ghosts. The Flayed Lands - the Dark Kingdom ruling over Central America, sometimes referred to as "the Dark Kingdom of Obsidian" when others bundle the North and South American Dark Kingdoms into it - operated on a semi-theocratic system that allowed them to reap Pathos freely from mortal devotion. Unfortunately, wraiths fleeing Stygia saw this system and were all sorts of horrified - Renegades because it reminded them of the empire they were fleeing, Heretics because of the associated sacrificial practices - and went all Cortez. The destruction of the Flayed Lands is part of what set off the Third Great Maelstrom, so nobody won there.

Several Aztec gods are featured in the Rifts sourcebook: "Pantheons of the Megaverse". "World Book 9: South America Two" features the Empire of the Sun, a Magic- and Technology-using state ruled by the actual Incan gods. In addition, they also have several Nazca influences, not due to poor research, but rather an alliance and assimilation with the ancient Nazca Line Makers and their descendants.

One of the pantheons player characters can choose from in the tabletop RPG Scion is the Aztec one. It features Mictlantecuhtli, God of death and the underworld, who is a sadistic SOB even by the standards of Aztec Mythology, and that is saying something. The "Aztlanti" pantheon are not the only Central American pantheon; they're just one of the last ones left following the war with the Titans. Others are still around, but not nearly as powerful. The Atzlanti signature character, Dr. Aaron Tigrilla, is fairly sympathetic — he was a surgeon who got around that "necessary blood sacrifice" bit by sacrificing the leftovers of heart surgery to Tezcatlipoca. As you can imagine, this didn't go over too well when the board found out. He eventually becomes the god of extirpation, and works to patch up soldiers in the war against the Titans note and dealing with the annoyance of his closest compatriot being a little too quick to Mercy Kill them.

There are several examples of this in Exalted, as well. Firstly, the characters used to represent the language of Old Realm are pretty much directly based off of Mayan hieroglyphs. Also, the First Age was either completely loaded down with this trope, or it was mostly limited to the areas in the Southeast around Rathess, depending on your edition.

The Lizardmen in Warhammer, Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Mayincatec. Culturally they're closer to the Maya, with the interest in astronomy and prophecies and the like; however one of their major gods is based on Quetzalcoatl, and the jewelry they often carry is more Aztec-inspired, as is their focus on blood sacrifice. To complete the hat-trick, they have a habit of mummifying dead rulers and displaying them as relics, which is taken from the Inca (said mummified remains are haunted by Slann's spirit and are the most powerful magic users in the setting).

Several Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks, including Deities & Demigods, have presented versions of the Aztec pantheon suitable for use in campaigns.

The jungle continent Xen'drik in the Eberron campaign setting has a Mayincatec flavour.

The Forgotten Realms campaign setting featuresnote Well, featured after the Spellplague, Maztica being switched with the counterpart on an alternate dimension, until it was brought back again the continent of Maztica, far to the west across the ocean from Faerun, with a dominant culture, the Nexalans, based closely on the Aztecs. It was subject to invasion by the Amnians and their admiral Cordell and became the site of a burgeoning Faerunian colony. Based so closely on the Aztecs, in fact, that it might technically not count as Mayincatec: rather than generic ancient South American culture, the Nexalans areAztecs. With a quick word-find-and-replace for proper nouns, and a light sprinkling of taking the mythology at face value (this was TSR policy at the time, though Maztica was one of the most severe offenders). Additionally, the sourcebook Serpent Kingdoms, describing the society and history of the yuan-ti (a race of evil snake people) gives them some distinctly Mesoamerican-inspired architecture and culture.

A classic adventure set in the World of Greyhawk, Lost Shrine of Tamoachan, has the Player Characters exploring the ruins of an Maya-themed temple. Later, the Olman people from Hepmonaland and the Amedio Jungle in the distant south were introduced with a culture that was pure Mayincatec.

Cyrodiil, homeland of the Imperials and the heart of the various Tamriellic Empires throughout history, was stated originally have been a lush jungle and home to the Nibenese, a cross between a Myincatec culture with some early Chinese Empire influences as well, with jungles, rivers, rice fields, tattoos, and stone cities. Later depictions transform it instead as a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of ancient Rome. This is justified as Tiber Septim, founder of the Third Cyrodiilic Empire, would use his powers post-apotheosis as the deity Talos to perform a Cosmic Retcon, transforming Cyrodiil into a temperate forest as a thanks to the Imperial Legions who served him so well in life. As shown in the prequel The Elder Scrolls Online, this change was retroactive, making it so Cyrodiil had always been a temperate forest.

Black Marsh, home of the Argonian race, particularly the Argonia region within it, has aesthetic influences to this effect. There are some suggestions in the lore that some of its ancient stone cities and pyramid structures were not built by the Argonians themselves, but older civilizations which have since been wiped out.

The Mystic Ruins and Angel Island in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Some of the characters are even named after Central and South American locations. Sega paid a few developers around $250,000 each to go down to Mexico and base Mystic Ruin after the Mayan temples.

Aztec: an early videogame from the Apple II era. The Indiana Jones-like protagonist had to explore the Tomb of Quetzalcoatl in search of a jade idol, facing beasts, snakes, spiders, traps and fearsome blowgun-toting warriors rendered in all their 80's graphics glory.

Greendog: the protagonist is a cool surfer dude unfortunately cursed with an amulet that prevents surfing. He must track down a lost Aztec civilisation and recover six pieces of treasure in order to lift the curse.

Tomb Raider: The City of Vilcabamba is based on the real-life last outpost of the Inca. It contains a gold idol modelled on a Tumi, a ceremonial knife used in sacrifices.

Call of Juarez, a Western-themed FPS has the protagonists seeking and finding Aztec treasures.

Fahrenheit (Released in America as Indigo Prophecy): Big Bad The Oracle is a Mayan priest who performed human sacrifice, magically living on into the present day. The other Big Bad is suspiciously Matrixish Artificial Intelligences the Maya fight against. It's a weird game.

Rise of Nations features the Mayans, Inca, and Aztec all separately, but the Aztecs do get the "Power of Sacrifice" as their starting power.

Rise of Legends has the Cuotl, a race of jungle dwelling natives led by alien gods, who use animate stone jaguars and snakes as combat units.

The jungle trolls from Warcraft are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Aztecs. They have Mesoamerican pyramids, practice humanoid sacrifice and some worship the blood god Hakkar, who is portrayed as a winged serpent (read: Quetzalcoatl). Other trolls in different regions of the world have some Mayincatec architecture but the parallels aren't as obvious as the jungle ones.

Banjo-Tooie has Mayahem Temple, where sports like archery and kickball are practiced. In Real Life, while Mayans played Mesoamerican ballgames, they never practiced target shooting (and especially didn't worship a target shooting god).

The game does largely avert the trope, but has to use it to a certain extent to make the game function properly, such as using Eagle Warriors as a common unit to Mayans and Aztecs rather than just Aztec. Also, while both civilisations have exactly the same architectural style, this is due to putting its societies into aesthetic groups: Chinese/Japanese/Koreans/Mongols, British/Celts/Franks/Spanish, Byzantines/Saracens/Persians/Turks and Huns/Goths/Vikings/Teutons all look the same too. Both Aztec and Maya wonders are pyramids, but are in totally different shapes that are accurate to their respective cultures.

Further avoided by the programmers since they did consider adding an Inca civilization in the x-pack, but decided to drop it when they found that it would require a completely different architectural style (the other reason was that they already had trouble designing two playable factions with no cavalry, and felt that they couldn't do a third that would come as different enough from either of them).

Giving the name "Eldorado" to the Mayan Unique Technology is inexcusable, though. This seems to pursue the Mayas for some reason: When the fan-made x-pack Forgotten Empires (later officialized as The Forgotten) gave civilizations a second UT, the Mayans got one called "Tlatoani" - the title used by Aztec emperors. When fans complained, it was changed to "Obsidian Arrows", which also makes more sense as a name for the technology (a boost in archer damage to buildings).

Forgotten Empires/The Forgotten does include an Inca civilization. It uses the same Mesoamerican building style and eagle warriors (who get even more obvious Aztec skins than in the previous x-pack), but it also has two unique units (Kamayuks and Andean slingers), units that speak Quechua, and in the final version the player even begins the game with a llama.

Refreshingly averted in Medieval 2 Total War Americas Campaign. The Aztecs and Mayas are both playable and are shown to be very different but with some overlapping features, for instance both worship the Feathered Serpent but call him Quetzalcoatl and Kukalkan respectively.

The Inca are nowhere to be found because the map doesn't go south of Guatemala, but the Tarascans are present and they originated in the Andes.

The three civilizations represent the Meso American civilizations, sharing the same design for buildings, units, and wonders (including two pyramids), differing in their unique units and minor combat bonuses.

The tutorial campaign features the Aztecs actually beating Cortes and eventually establishing a nation parallel to the United States, while the Incas become a fascist nation allying with Nazi Germany.

Donkey Kong 64 has Angry Aztec, with a llama in the middle of a tropical jungle in an island with no mountain high enough to match those of the former Aztec domains in historical Mexico. The level itself is mostly a desert. While Mexico does have coastal dunes, llamas reside in the mountains that are nothing like the Aztec themed desert of the work at hand.

The RTS/civilization game Theocracy is set in and around the Aztec empire. In the campaigns you play the Aztecs or other nearby tribes.

One of the scenes in Sanitarium takes place in a very Mayincatec village, where the villagers are terrorized by a bloodthirsty rampaging Quetzalcoatl. Except it's really your nemesis, so there's an excuse for out of character behavior. Also, you are at the time Olmec, a stone warrior god. Also, it all only exists within your mind.

Taiyou No Shinden Asteka IInote a.k.a. Tombs and Treasure is a first-person graphical adventure game that has the ruins of Mayan city Chichén Itzá as a setting.

OutRun 2006 has a Mayincatec race track. It ends with the atlantes from Tula in the state of Hidalgo, sitting next to the pyramids of Teotihuacán in the State of Mexico, after crossing the pyramid of Chichén-Itzá in the Yucatán peninsula which is next to the Major Temple in downtown Mexico City.

Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire has a liberal sprinkling of this trope. The primary example is the Nahuatla tribe, who live in a city called Tichticatl. There's also a lost underground city formerly inhabited by the Kotl, who were Mayincatec lizard people.

The ruins of La-Mulana appear to be located in Latin America and at first appear to be the work of ancient indigenous people. The boss Palenque is based on a famous Maya bas-relief often interpreted by cranks as evidence of Ancient Astronauts. The final year of the Aztecs' fifth age (2012) figures in one of the puzzles.

Unusually, the mix of South American cultures is explicitly explained in the backstory; the ruins of La-Mulana are the birthplace of all civilizations. Every area contains elements of different cultures and mythologies, suggesting that theses cultures actually borrowed theological, architectural, and mythological elements from La-Mulana. Lemeza notes this in one of his lectures on the Wiiware remake blog. Being an archaeologist, he is quick to point out the images, structures and elements, seen in multiple ancient cultures including the Mayan, Teotihuacan, Aztec, Tiwanaku, Inca, and even Persian civilizations.

Shadowbane has a bunch of lizardmen who inhabit heavily Aztec influenced ruins. While the blood sacrifice aspect isn't played up much, the game lore say that they were up to something pretty bad - that is, until the centaurs killed off their priesthood.

Walled City in Star Fox Adventures has a very clear Mayincatec look, complete with the pyramids, though its inhabitants don't have any Mayincatec traits. It is a likely cross between this and Asian architecture, which may explain the presence of dragon heads near the Arwing. Likewise, Cloudrunner Fortress is a blend of Greek, Japanese and Mayincatec elements.

Kehjistan in Diablo 2 combines Mayincatec building elements with South Asian jungles. It is also the seat of power of a monotheistic, very Christian influenced world religion, and most of it has a very Darkest Africa feel. They do practice blood sacrifice - to the prime evil Mephisto, probably without even knowing it.

Averted in Civilization 4 and 5, where you can play as the Aztecs or as the Incas, or even as the Maya in a later expansion, all as separate distinct peoples. And go on to invent plastics and launch a rocket into space. It's quite awesome, and ironic, to play as one of these civilizations and then conquer Spain. Especially on a map duplicating Earth where you can reverse the tide of colonisation.

Crash Bandicoot is based on Oceanic places such as - and most prominently - New Zealand, but in many games there's plenty of Maya-esque imagery, especially in the first game of the series.

Game Freak loves America so much, they've dedicated at least one mon to each continent. The Kanto region gives us Zapdos, a thunderbird. Natives of Johto can get Natu, a quetzal, that evolves into Xatu, a totem pole. And in Unova, which is in the United States, you get Sigilyph, which looks like a living Nazca Line drawing.

Persona 2 has "mystical" ruins created by Mayans mysteriously appear after the publication of a book of such rumors. Those ruins never existed before that. The book's release brought them into reality.

Spelunky has every Mayincatec trope in the book. Human sacrifice, priests with feather headdresses worshiping evil gods, underground trap-filled stone temples, and even a gold city. Oh, and throw in an Olmec head for good measure.

Shin Megami Tensei frequently includes Mesoamerican and South American gods in its Demonic Compendium, but they are almost always well-researched and specifically tied to their cultural origin. Of particular note, Soul Hackers and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (which takes its demon designs from the former) use Quetzalcoatl's "pale-skinned Caucasian priest" form rather than the too-literal (but inaccurate) "snake with wings" of the original series and the Persona subfranchise (Quetzalcoatl's "feathered serpent" form is actually Gucumatz, another name for the Mayan version of Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, and is depicted as a separate demon in the games.)

Averted in the Real-Time Strategy game American Conquest. All three civilizations have unique bonuses, building architecture and units.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age has the city of Contigo, which is in this style. Bizarrely, it's also the birth hometown of Ivan, who lives in Kalay and looks European, and Hama, who lives near Xian and looks Chinese. And they're siblings.

The Lost Kingdom park in Theme Park World, which name-drops Incan, Mayan, and Aztec cultures simultaneously.

One of the new characters to be featured in Mortal Kombat X is Kotal Kahn, who looks like a straight example of this trope at first glance, but he is an overall faithful representation of Huitzilopochtli, and his name bears resemblance to Quetzalcoatl.

In Deadfall Adventures, the final chapter of the game takes place in Guatemala, in and around Xibalba, the Mayan "city of the dead". The game's mythology is correct regarding the city and its rulers, but here it's a real place, with a failed expedition of conquistadors (and their sailing ships, high in the mountains), one of whom's diary you can read.

Bloodseeker from Dota 2 has a vaguely Aztec motif. His gods require cubic furlongs of blood just to be satiated, and Bloodseeker contributes to that by shedding other heroes' blood and transferring its energy to his gods.

The jungle levels in the second installment of The Lost Vikings, which include distinctive ruins riddled with traps and spear-throwing savages, and a shaman who needs to collect some ingredients for supposed time travel.

Metal Slug: the very first thing Marco and co. see in the series is a gigantic Olmec head in the background at the start of the first game's first level. Metal Slug 5 features Aztec-like shamen and their temple full of traps.

Horizon Zero Dawn: the Carja tribe displays many of these traits. Their capital city Meridian is a hybrid of several South American styles of architecture, and before the beginning of the game they were also said to have offered ritual sacrifices to the sun on behalf of their ruler, who is known as the Sun-King. Their priesthood is also frequently seen wearing elaborate headdresses.

Ogre of Tekken is based on the real-life Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli. The story claims that he's created by the Ancient Astronauts eons ago.

In Starbound, one of the playable alien races are the Avians, a bird-like civilization with all the Mayincatec trappings, that is deeply religious, usually doing blood sacrifices for their god Kluex.

Webcomics

The "Death Volley" chapter of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is an adventure set in a classic Mayincatec trap-filled temple. The end of the chapter hints at what gets revealed later: that King Radical built the culture that created said temple.

Wapsi Square establishes a link between Mayan and Egyptian culture via Atlantis. Quite surprising for what started out looking like a Friends-style webcomic sitcom. The Long Count Calendar (See main article above) is key to the plot.

Pilli Adventure has had several Aztec monsters show up, including a beheaded ball-game player and an animated water-pot.

One Subnormality strip features The Pink-Haired Girl being sent a drink at a bar by "the merciless Teoxhl...something something", who turns out to be a giant Mayincatec-style stone idol. The drink is jaguar blood.

"Gawd, these desperate older guys are so creepy. You just know he's hoping you're a virgin too."

Superjail! had an episode where they uncover the ancient city of Pummel-onia, a Mayincatec shrine to war and fighting. They even have a god of war in ceremonial dress that was trapped in animal form.

Subverted in X-Men: Beast and Jubilee are travelling around Peru, and come across an isolated tribe. Beast immediately notes that they are Mayan, not Inca, and about 3,000 miles south of where they should be.

On The Angry Beavers, in the episode "Moronathon Man," Norbert ingests a potion that makes him stupid. (Meanwhile, Dagget becomes a super-genius, because the potion couldn't make him any stupider.) Somehow, Norbert ends up on an island, where he sits atop a Mayan or Aztec pyramid, being worshipped by people who think he's a god, and fed fruit. The worshippers bow down and repeat his mantra: "DUUUUUUHHHH!!!!"

Real Life

The Mexico pavilion at Epcot is built to look like an Aztec pyramid.

If there's human sacrifice in pre-Columbian North America (the only case after Columbus being the Pawnee), it will most likely be attributed to Mesoamerican civilizations.

The closest to a real life example of a Mayincatec culture is probably the rarely discussed Tarascan Empire in Western Mexico, a long-time enemy of the Aztecs. The Tarascans (who even today call themselves P'urhépecha or "Newcomers") speak a language isolate, were the first in Mesoamerica to work copper and bronze, and made ceramics with apparent Andean stylistic influences. It's been suspected for a long time that they descend from pre-Inca South American peoples that sailed to Mexico from what is now Colombia and Ecuador.

Inversely, the Manteño-Huancavilca culture complex in coastal Ecuador was once suggested to be of Mayan origin, due to some artistic influences and a local native myth about civilization being brought to the region by a foreign king who came from the sea.

During the Spanish conquest, many indigenous peoples allied with the Spanish and re-settled in places far from their land of origin, like Tlaxcalans in northern Mexico (and as far as New Mexico and Texas) and Nicaraguans in Peru. Some Tlaxcalans even ended up in the Philippines.

Etzatlan in the Mexican state of Jalisco is made of the name of the Itzas, the Maya people who built Chichen Itza in what is now the Mexican state of Yucatan, and the Nahuatl (the language The Mexica and many other Aztec peoples spoke) prepositional suffix, "tla/tlan," which means, "place of."

A complication in this trope is that it is often plainly apparent that there was a lot of cross-cultural exchange going on between the various city-building cultures of Mesoamerica. Elements like the Ball Game, some form of blood sacrifice (anything from token drops of blood to ripping out the hearts of whole village's worth of people one after the other), and substantial portions of basic mythological structures are often shared between multiple civilizations. As we can trace back complex civilizations in this region for at least a couple of thousand years, it would be quite surprising if there wasn't substantial appearance of similar cultural themes. But between Mesoamerican and South American cultures, not so much.

The Hernández Brothers Sect in 1960s Mexico was a scam that took advantage of the ignorance of their iliterate victims to claim "tributes" in exchange for favors from mysterious "Inca gods in the mountains" (victims and scammers alike being unaware that the Incas lived in South America). It went off the rails when the brothers, in order to keep The Masquerade when two victims were becoming wary, decided to bring in an Axe-Crazy prostitute, Magdalena Solís, and present her as the incarnation of the "Inca goddess" they were prophets of. Solís rapidly seized absolute control and, being actually versed in Aztec mythology, presented herself as the goddess Coatlicue and demanded human sacrifices by removal of the heart. Oops.

In architecture, the Mayan Revival makes use of techniques and iconography from various Mesoamerican cultures in a Modernist and Art Deco milieu.

While the feathered serpent was a pretty widespread god (and pretty much the only one non-experts can name) it was - ironically enough - almost universally described as abhorring human sacrifice, even during times and in cultures that were otherwise quite fond of ripping out hearts and whatnot.

The ceramics of the Moche in northwest Peru (100-700 AD) depict warriors in falcon or eagle-looking suits, who are (naturally) unrelated to the Aztec eagle warriors of Mesoamerica.

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